We fear uncertainty, especially in business. But uncertainty also means there is change, development, progress.
Uncertainty is the younger sister of curiosity. We should embrace her, because she brings variety, she lets us discover new horizons, new markets, new potentials, and talents.
You can’t get certain by ignoring the uncertainties of your business and markets. Uncertainty does not go away just because you close your eyes. Embrace and anticipate the uncertainties you may encounter.
If you have a philosopher hidden somewhere in your corporation, talk to her, listen to her, make him heard throughout the company.
“The value of philosophy is, in fact, to be sought largely in its very uncertainty.
The man who has no tincture of philosophy goes through life imprisoned in the prejudices derived from common sense, from the habitual beliefs of his age or his nation, and from convictions which have grown up in his mind without the co-operation or consent of his deliberate reason.
To such a man the world tends to become definite, finite, obvious; common objects rouse no questions, and unfamiliar possibilities are contemptuously rejected.
As soon as we begin to philosophize, on the contrary, we find that even the most everyday things lead to problems to which only very incomplete answers can be given.
Philosophy, though unable to tell us with certainty what is the true answer to the doubts it raises, is able to suggest many possibilities which enlarge our thoughts and free them from the tyranny of custom.
Thus, while diminishing our feeling of certainty as to what things are, it greatly increases our knowledge as to what they may be; it removes the somewhat arrogant dogmatism of those who have never traveled into the region of liberating doubt, and it keeps alive our sense of wonder by showing familiar things in an unfamiliar aspect.” – Bertrand Russell